Bus-ride lengths detailed in study

49 minutes 1-way is state’s average

Public school students in Arkansas spend an average of 49.4 minutes on the bus to get to school each morning, according to a study by the Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research.

The study released by the bureau last week was mandated by Act 1288 of 2013 because of concerns about children's health and welfare raised by parents reporting long bus rides to and from school.

The study showed that some students spend as much as 167 minutes -- 2 hours and 47 minutes -- on the bus on their way to school and the same amount of time on their way home, for a total of 5 hours and 34 minutes on the bus each school day.

State Rep. Reginald Murdock, D-Marianna, sponsored the bill requiring the study, saying that too much time on a bus can cause more than just boredom.

"I have a lot of concerns about how that much time can affect the desired outcomes academically for children," Murdock said. "But more than that, it can have an effect on everything from the quality of life, to health issues with asthma, to readiness to learn if they have to get up that early. And a lot of children rely on the school nutrition program to eat breakfast. I have received calls saying children aren't getting to school with enough time to eat breakfast and make it to class before the bell."

The bureau surveyed all of the state's 238 school districts for information on how many buses they use, how many students were on each bus, how many miles the buses traveled in the morning and afternoon, what the earliest pickup time was for students and what the longest travel time was in one direction. The survey also looked at how many bus drivers each district has and what those drivers are paid.

In total, the bureau collected information for almost 5,400 bus routes used every day by the state's public school districts. The districts reported:

• On average students spend just under 50 minutes on a bus to school and 50 minutes home from school each day.

• The median number of minutes students spent on the bus in a single ride was 47 minutes.

• The average earliest pickup time was 6:51 a.m., although several school districts had routes that began picking up students before 6 a.m.

• Buses travel a total 5,321 miles every morning to get children to school.

• Longest ride times ranged from three minutes on one bus to 167 minutes on three others.

All three of the buses with the longest ride times were reported for children in the Little Rock School District, which bureau staff said was surprising.

"Going through the results of the survey, we don't have total confidence in everything we received, but we think it gets at a good overall picture," said Richard Wilson, assistant director of Research Services at the Bureau of Legislative Research.

"When we saw that number in an urban area, though, we called Little Rock and said, 'Really?''

The district affirmed the lengthy bus rides, but said it was because of the transportation of students from outside the district to one of its six magnet schools, Wilson said.

The Little Rock district is phasing out transport of magnet school students from other school districts in Pulaski County as the result of the settlement of a long-running school desegregation lawsuit.

A spokesman for the Little Rock School District said the district's transportation director was not available to answer questions Friday because he was tied up finishing transportation plans for the start of the school year Monday.

In addition to creating a comprehensive picture of what school bus travel looks like today, legislators also asked that the study look into what it would take to improve transportation and limit the amount of time children spend on a bus each day.

The survey included a question of how much funding it would take for districts to limit the maximum amount of time students could be on a bus during one trip to 90 minutes, 80 minutes, 70 minutes, 60 minutes or 50 minutes. The cost and number of districts that would need to spend more money varied for each time limit.

If the Legislature were to pass a 90-minute maximum, 106 school districts would require more funding for buses, drivers and fuel in the amount of about $2.7 million. If the ride time was limited to no more than 50 minutes, 130 districts would need an estimated $25.2 million to meet that goal.

Wilson said during a legislative hearing last week that the disparity between funding needs was "$10 for every $1" between some districts.

Murdock said he and many other legislators had been made aware of school transportation issues by parents or school districts, so the information released in the study wasn't a surprise.

"I'd talked to school districts, parents, colleagues and other legislators about this issue," he said. "Their concerns were specifically about rural areas, but now we're finding it's a problem in urban areas, too."

Other legislators also raised questions about the study, including how much of the long ride times were caused by rural geography or district consolidation because of a 2003 law requiring at least 350 students for a district to remain independent.

Wilson said many districts in those situations receive "isolated school funds" because of how far students live from the schools, to help pay for the extra cost of busing children to and from class.

But according to the study, many of those consolidated districts aren't having as much of a problem with bus travel times as the more urban schools where buses and students can be stuck in traffic jams regularly.

For example, at the Harrisburg School District, which took in the now dissolved Weiner School District because of consolidation mandates, the longest a student rides on a bus is 65 minutes. The longest a child is on a bus in the Emerson-Taylor-Bradley School District, which took in the consolidated Bradley District in 2013, is 85 minutes, according to the study results.

The Legislature is looking at transportation funding for school districts as one of a dozen education equity issues as part of its biennial Education Adequacy Study. But Murdock said transportation shouldn't be treated with the same funding formula as teachers or classroom funding because of the very different needs.

While the cost of having a teacher for a set number of students can be calculated and broken down to per pupil funding numbers, Murdock said it's harder to accomplish that with transportation because of the different quality of roads, lack of direct routes, traffic, distance students live from schools and the number of students who live in a district.

The state should fund transportation based on need, not on a formula, he said.

"Think about what Mr. Wilson said. If we have a 10-to-1 difference in funding needs for transportation and we fund all of those districts at the same rate, say at a five, then half of the districts are making a profit and half are left with a deficit to make sure students can even get to class," he said.

"Those dollar needs represent real people, real students. When we start talking about fairness, equity and efficiency, that's not how this is working out. And that's the discussion we need to have."

Murdock said he wants to address that funding issue before setting a time limit on how long students can be on a bus, but he hoped both can be looked at in the 2015 session.

Metro on 08/17/2014

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